


Shuri Based Bildungsroman -Prologue

by mychemicalliteratureclub



Category: Black Panther (2018)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-27
Updated: 2018-04-27
Packaged: 2019-04-28 15:19:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14452059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mychemicalliteratureclub/pseuds/mychemicalliteratureclub
Summary: “My first blood,” she murmurs, speaking still to the inert and now bloody corpse of her would be murderer. “I suppose that makes me a woman, doesn’t it.”A sort of growing up? story loosely based on the character Shuri from Black Panther, which was a beautiful movie.





	Shuri Based Bildungsroman -Prologue

Prologue

 

First the bowl. A gold basin that gleams softly in the smoky dark, the metal cold to the touch worn from decades of calloused hands. Hers and her ancestors before her. It sits comfortably in the grove of the wooden table. She places her fingers on the sides again; a turn to the right, a little to the left. Perfect. Harmony is encompassed in the proper completion of ceremony. Dry clay jars of scented oil stand clustered in the back of the cave. Lifting the jar becomes harder each time, straining her aged back a little more than before. Uncorked, the heavy fragrance ripples through the stale air of the cavern, pouring into the corners and saturating the dyed curtains and rugs with ineffable sweetness. She leaves it to settle a moment, and reaching into a shelf hidden in the wall, extracts from within a brittle leather pouch. Tips the contents gently onto her wrinkled palm. Three gemstones: red, yellow and white, flash venomously in the rusty afternoon sun that streams through the beads covering the doorway. She keeps from looking too closely into their depths. Cautious, as she has been taught, wary of the power she guards. The stones she places in their slots within the basin, their light dancing on the polished surface. The jar tips, and oil pours out in a steady stream from the lid, gurgling softly as the stones are submerged, and the liquid rises slowly and heavily until the basin is filled. The oil presses limpidly above the rim of the basin without breaking free, and the gems still glitter within, their light a little more subdued, and distorted as if seen from a great distance away. Taking her seat behind the table, she breathes in, then out. It won’t be a long wait.

 

The sky is stained a heinous indigo. It drips with dark contours and cumuli of titan proportions, ripping apart the sunlit expanse of pale as it cruises purposefully forward, leaving shadow in its wake. Its colour clashes with the desert floor, still a ruddy orange continuing toward the horizon, where the eye is lost in the haze of baked air, shimmering in the heat. The clouds have not robbed the afternoon of its sting, and the oppressive heat is felt deep in the bones of the girl walking barefoot across the dirt. Though she feels it, yet she does not show it. Her head is held high, proud, disdainful of the dust coating her bleeding feet, eyes fixed ahead to where she knows she will see it. She has followed the signs of the stars, as her mother has taught her, and walked through the red sands and rocks, the pale grasses and weeds for the two days past. Her canteen, a leather skin filled from the village well, lies behind, abandoned and empty in the dust. She won’t be needing it to complete her journey, and excess of any kind is distasteful to the spirit realm. Better to trust her ancestors to guide her footsteps than to try and prepare for the unknowable. There, ahead in the heat mist, she sees it. A mound of stones, piled high on the dull plain to mark the entrance to the underground cavern. The priestess will be waiting for her. Her steps increase in pace a little, and eagerness lends a blush to her coffee brown cheeks. Above, the clouds draw closer, slicing across the sky in concert with her nimble footsteps, an ominous curtain pulled across the stage by her muscular shoulders.

 

The girl thinks she arrives unnoticed. Her hesitant footsteps tread ever so lightly down the clay slope that leads to her doorway. The priestess grins. She can almost taste the anxiety, mingling with the electric calm that pervades the air minutes before the storm breaks. She passes a dry tongue over her worn lips, lets the words sit patiently on her tongue, preparing to break her month of silence. 

“Come in.” she says quietly, almost in a whisper, though the girl hears it, she knows. Every little noise is audible, amplified by the great silence of the desert air and the oncoming storm. The words draw no perceptible movement from the shadow beyond her doorway. Did she hear? Is this simple insolence? Fright? “Come in!” she repeats, a little louder, trying to add authority to her rasping tone. And then finally the girl does enter.

 

She is tall, her head nearly brushing the clay doorway as she steps inside. Her eyes are inscrutable, dark and powerful. They lock eyes, and the tension is deep; primal. The silence becomes heavy, and the priestess breaks it, slightly frustrated with herself for the way she is, even a little, unnerved. “Sit, girl.” she orders, and the girl sits, breaking the eye contact quickly as if ashamed for her lack of deference. Good. Probably she doesn’t possess the inner strength to maintain her outward posture of willfulness. 

“You have entered this shrine a child,” the priestess continues, her eyes tracing the features of the girl - finely braided hair, high and defined cheekbones. Her mother was right. She shares her father’s visage. “You leave it a woman.” she pauses, giving emphasis to the words. “Or not at all.”

Her countenance is unchanged. Perhaps she does not register the import of what she has just heard. The looks of her father, perhaps, but not his mind. “Your parents, no doubt, wish your life kept.” she intoned. “I? I wish what is best for the people. May you live through this, and return strengthened, to serve them well. To serve them - or, if the signs read truly, perhaps to lead them.” Now her attention was caught. She looked up again, and a fierce light was in her eyes. Ambition… so she truly was dangerous. But her speech was curt.

“Tell me what I have to do.”

 

“Choose.”

The decision was barbed, the girl knew that. It was important and sacred and lethal. There was no going back if you chose incorrectly. The white stone, for healing, for craftsmanship, for making and repairing bodies and stone and wood. The yellow, for agriculture, fishing and farming. Important, easy, yet… dull. Unsatisfying. And there, deep within the basin, and glimmering with a bright crimson light, was the red stone. The warriors stone. The leaders stone. A polished fragment of the stone that her father had worn in his crown. The refracted light, thrown onto the ceiling of the cavern, diluted by the heady oil in the basin, sparkled in her eye, taking her mind far from the hole in the desert, and the sharp eyes of the withered old priestess; throwing her vision on the howling wind, across the miles and miles of land, villages, roads, rivers, that could be hers. Hers to hold tight in the fist of a warrior queen’s hand.

 

The same hand that now puzzles over the surface of the gleaming liquid in the basin. She feels the decision she has to make. It only remains to bear with it, to accept the consequences of her choice, as she has been taught. As she has been taught. As she has been told. The definitions, the restrictions of life. The rules, the ceremonies, the tradition. She abhors them. Looking up, she locks eyes again with the priestess. The old witch, trying to dictate life and womanhood to  _ her _ . But there is a peculiar half grin to the shade of her face, a fixedness of her gaze. She looks down, almost too late. The palm of her hand an inch away from the scented oil. 

“Well?” the priestess is impatient. “Are you not ready?”

The air is suddenly pressing; close. The light from the lamps surrounding is too yellow, bright and stultifying. It glistens on a sudden flash of ebony near the wrist of the old woman. Her hands move almost before her mind reacts, and suddenly she has the priestess by the throat, with her other hand gripping the dagger sheathed close to the woman’s wrist. Her eyes go wide with sudden fear. “What are you doing?!” she shouts. “This is r-ridiculous. H-have you no respect…” the malevolent look on the girl’s face silences her.

“What, precisely,” she whispers menacingly, drawing close. “Did my mother tell you to do?”

“Nothing!” the priestess protests loudly, still trying to hold onto her fabricated innocence, her imagined authority. “Child, you shouldn’t meddle with the secrets of those above -”

Her wrist is twisted painfully, and the knife yanked from its grip. Suddenly, the old woman’s hand is dangerously close to the golden surface of the gleaming oil. The rosy sweetness is almost tangible, peeling off the surface in waves.

“You wouldn’t have any objection, would you,” continued the girl slowly. “to touching the oil? I’m sure that the Elders would agree that the… efficacy of their… is it poison? is up to their standards. You are old. There can’t be much life left in you to lose.”

 

The priestess face pales, and with a sudden movement, a savage energy, she wrenches the knife back into her free hand, and slashes across the table, slicing the orange ceremonial robe a hair’s breadth away from the stomach. The girl catches her wrist again, and they struggle for possession of the knife, wiry strength against new muscle: vicious hate gleams quickly in the old woman’s eyes as she strikes again and again, aiming to kill. But strength borne of fear gives the girl the upper hand, and with a violent effort suddenly the skirmish is over. The shining black hilt of the blade is barely visible, imbedded in the priestess’ chest. 

“Your mother was right,” she murmurs softly, the fire gone from her angry eyes. “You are more dangerous than I could have imagined.” 

She takes no notice of the dying woman on the floor, her gaze level, unseeing as her arms tremble uncontrollably. Breathing, trying to calm herself, she picks up the basin, taking care to avoid spilling the viscous liquid over the edge. She takes it to the wall, and empties it, letting the oil darken the orange dust. Holding it upside down, she waits until the last dregs of the oil are soaking into the dirt floor, before prying the red stone loose from its setting in the bottom of the bowl. She holds it to a brazier, pondering the way that it seems to catch, and soak up the yellow light, darkening the room with its scarlet flame. 

 

“Curse you,” croaks the priestess, her blood spilling, staining her robe. “Curse you, child for -”

The girl crouches, face close to the old woman, an almost pitying look in her eyes. 

“Silence,” she tells her, quietly. “Hold your tongue, Grandmother.” The old woman’s mouth slips open in shock as the knife is pulled from her chest, spraying dark blood over the floor. Another spray of blood pulses across the dirt as her throat is slashed, and her silence assured for eternity. “My first blood,” she murmurs, speaking still to the inert and now bloody corpse of her would be murderer. “I suppose that makes me a woman, doesn’t it.”

 

The sky is past overcast. The clouds now blanket the entirety of the sky, extending past both horizons, and the air is fetid with moisture and tense electricity. The wind stops for a hushed moment, in anticipative calm, and the desert sand is silent as a woman steps out into the weathered plain. An ebony handled knife, slick with blood, is in her fighting hand, and in her left she grasps the eternal keepsake of her tribe. A gemstone as rich in hue as it is steeped in history, in violence and the old magic of the dunes. Her step is heavier than when she entered the dim cavern earlier that day, and her face has gained, in the space of a few short hours, the gravity of adulthood. She tips her head back. Singing to the whirling maelstrom of ominous gray above, her voice resonates, hoarse and emotional with fatigue.

“Father,” she cries. “your death has not been in vain. I will make them suffer as you have suffered!”

 

Above, the storm breaks, and blue lightning dances fretfully in the turgid downpour, lighting up the blood red plains.

 


End file.
